The Journey

#15 – Nine Inch Nails

As I was thinking about my blog last night, I was excited that I’ve gotten this far. I mean, I find it pretty awesome that we’re into the top 15 artists. Then it hit me. That means I am only 15 weeks away from being 40. That was a bit of a blow. But hey, it’s kind of the reason I’m doing this, so it isn’t all bad.

But enough drivel about getting old and fearing the rapid passage of time. Right now it’s time to kick off the new week with a new artist. And this week is all about Nine Inch Nails.

Now, for all of the love and importance I had for Nine Inch Nails in my teens and twenties, I have fallen away from them quite rapidly. I haven’t payed much attention to their recent works, and only passively picked up a couple of more recent albums without really giving them much thought. I’m going to listen to what I have, though, and maybe a fresh exposure will re-energize me about them. I don’t think so, but I’ll be fair, nonetheless. So I’ll be listening to the Nine Inch Nails discography up to a point. I’ll be including a large amount of studio albums: Pretty Hate Machine (1989), Broken (1992), The Downward Spiral (1994), The Fragile (1999), With Teeth (2005), Year Zero (2007), The Slip (2008) and Hesitation Marks (2013). I’ll also be including a bunch of remix albums, maxi-singles and EPs: Head Like a Hole (1989), Sin (1990), Fixed (1992), Closer to God (1994), March of the Pigs (1994), Further Down the Spiral (1995), The Perfect Drug Versions (1997), Things Falling Apart (2000), Every Day is Exactly the Same (2006) and Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D (2007). I’ll of course be including soundtrack cuts from Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Lost Highway and Tomb Raider.

I’m leaving some things out. I won’t be listening to the soundtrack Nine Inch Nails did for the game Quake, partially because I’ve already done a week of video game music, but mostly because I don’t think it’ll fit. I’m also leaving out the four albums of Ghosts (2008). They are good, but ambient music isn’t something you listen to, its something to but on in the background, and it’ll just get in the way of getting through the rest of this.

I can already feel the memories coming back to me on this one. This is going to be a high nostalgia week for me, I just know it. Should still be fun, though.